The gold price was given a a quick $35 ride on the down-elevator today starting at 7:40 a.m EST. There were no news items or events that occurred that would have triggered the price hit. More likely, the Comex banks implemented another Comex open interest liquidation operation targeting the remaining 45,000+ longs in the December contract in an effort to get the December gold contract open interest as low as possible ahead the December first notice period, which begins this afternoon.

Reuters wrote a news report attributing the sell-off to “hopes for a virus vaccine.” Just one problem with this explanation: no new vaccine news was released today. In fact there was a complete absence of any news relevant to precious metals before or after the price ambush. The U.S. dollar index broke key support at 92 this morning and has continued lower. No mention of this gold-bullish market occurrence by Reuters. Crickets. Moreover, Reuters asserts that “investors dumped metal.”  This would have been a true comment but for the fact that no physical metal would have traded. The entire price decline started and ended on the Comex with paper derivative gold.

Chris Marcus (Arcadia Economics) and I discuss the latest events in the precious metals sector as well is talk about what the appointment of Janet Yellen as Treasury Secretary might mean for gold and silver prices:

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